


The Good Doctor

by Syberina5



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 10:50:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12839607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: Title: The Good DoctorWord Count: 2133Disclaimer: I’ve had kind of a lot of therapy.Author’s Note: I was scrolling through season six gifs—because I haven’t seen a single episode this season (life is rough, ya’ll) and gifs and thirty second clips are about all I have time for every third week—and reading a terrible HG fic and this happened. Ideally when the world is done being a time hog I will turn this into a fully fleshed out fic with cute Olicity scenes and Diggle banter and maybe a crossover in which I know who half ofThe FlashandLegendspeople are but… that’s as likely as Barry not making me roll my eyes. [Shrugs]“Thank you, doctor,” he said.“Call me Emily, Oliver,” she called without looking up, still seemingly engrossed.





	The Good Doctor

“It hurt. A lot, I guess, seeing my sister choosing to stand on that side of the line and…I don’t handle that kind of thing well.”

“What kind of thing?” she asked, pushing her dark rimmed glasses up by the corner of the eyepiece. “Pain? Hurt?”

“Pain I can handle,” Oliver rubbed his hands together, thought of one too many moments on Lian Yu, _A little too well._ “Hurt. A different hurt. People… leaving me…”

“No one likes to be abandoned by the people they love. Is that what it felt like, abandonment? With your sister choosing your enemy over you?”

“I… maybe.”

“Were you angry with Thea, Oliver?”

“No, disappointed. Let down. Not angry.”

“You sound like the parent of a teenager, Mr. Queen. Were you really disappointed in her? Remember: you knew how much you’d been lying to her, but you couldn’t tell her the truth about the side she was taking without telling her that you’d been lying all that time.” She leaned forward, her long light brown hair falling over a shoulder as she leaned her crossed arms on her crossed legs. “Are you sure that disappointment was in Thea?”

Oliver had to pause because she had done again what she’d seemed to be doing from the start, from before he had even walked in the door, and clocked his weaknesses before he had seen them himself (and he was no slouch at defensive strategy—though the offensive always came more easily to him). 

In the space his consideration left her phone trilled. “I’m afraid that’s our time, Mr. Queen,” she said with a faint smile while reaching to quiet the alarm. “I want to thank you for taking this seriously today. I know it was hard and I must say, you win in the messed up life department. Not an easy feat.”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged, rubbing his palms against his thighs, trying to put his feelings away before he left the office, “what’s the prize?”

“That depends,” she leaned back with a sigh, picking up the take out container she’d been eating from since about halfway through their session. 

“On?” Conditions were another thing he could find his way around, with or without a bow.

“On why you were telling me all of these details about your life. Was this just a pity party you were throwing, a venting session of Woe Is Me? Or were you using me and my skills as a sounding board, a way to see and process the many terrible things you have seen and done with the intention of being able to kick both the demons of your past and your present in their luscious hind ends?”

“I don’t know,” Oliver admitted. “Say it’s the first, what do I get for my trouble?”

“Exactly that, my pity. Woe is you. And that’s it.” She took an impressively large bite of pasta looking nonplussed.

“And the second?”

“Well, then,” she enunciated surprisingly well around the food she was still chewing, “then you get my respect,” she swallowed, “and my support in kicking this world in its shiny ass.”

He chuckled and smiled back at her before quirking an eyebrow, “Shiny?”

“Oh come on Oliver, of course it’s shiny. The world is over two thirds water, and since when have you seen a drop of water not be shiny in the sunshine? So yes, _shiny_.” She smiled broadly.

He still wasn’t ready to get up, still not ready to really accept what he’d told this woman today and put on his street face for the outside world again. “You remind me of someone.”

“I know. Someone you must respect a great deal, whose advice you value or you wouldn’t have told me a word today. You would have sauntered in here and flirted with me until you were this close,” she held up two fingers a sixteenth of an inch apart and squinted an eye through them as though she were going to use perspective to squash his head like a berry, “to being inappropriate and hope that I was so distracted by your charm and good looks that I didn’t realize you hadn’t told me a single honest thing the whole time.”

“Ah…” he felt the need to plead the fifth and wasn’t quite sure which direction to move any more.

“That was your plan until sixty seconds after you walked through that door. I am so glad you changed your mind. Whoever it is I remind you of…you must love that person a great deal to have trusted me—doctor-patient confidentiality be damned.”

“I,” he stumbled, “I do.”

“Make sure you say it often.” Her smile turned sad but her voice, her eyes remained soft. “You never know what can happen in your line of work Oliver Queen. But that really is our time so skedaddle,” she nodded towards the door. “ _Scoot_ ,” She brought the fork back to her mouth and dismissed him as she seemed to turn back to her lunch and whatever file she was pulling from her desk.

“Thank you, doctor,” he said.

“Call me Emily, Oliver,” she called without looking up, still seemingly engrossed.

***

“Oh, Oliver. You really do need to stop trusting pretty faces who are remotely kind to you.”

The woman he had believed to be Dr. Emily Mortray, highly recommended therapist, pulled a gun on him after months of treatment, after months of confiding in her things he’d only ever told Felicity in gasped and sometimes terrified bits doing some of those final pieces of healing he felt he needed to in order to be the father and partner his family deserved. He felt more at peace with himself than ever before in his life, before Chase, before Slade, before the island, even before he’d met Laurel. 

And she was just as coolly pointing a gun at him as she had the kung pao chicken last week when she’d said he was evading the question about who had started a particular incident where he and Tommy had turned a quiet evening at home into a raucous party.

He did a quick calculation and twitched in the direction of putting his disarmament into action when the gun hand twitched as well. “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahh,” she tisked. “I know how fast you move Oliver and I want there to be plenty of room between us. Hands on the armrests please.”

He obliged and she did something on her phone. A few moments later two masked figures came into the room and tied him fairly securely to the chair. “Why?”

“Why not?” she shrugged. “There isn’t always reason and logic the way you’d like there to be. I’ve been trying to tell you Oliver, over and over, not everything is about you. Your parents’ marriage and its many trials wasn’t about you, Laurel’s death wasn’t about you, Felicity’s success where you’d failed wasn’t about you. You can’t control other people, Oliver, not the bad guys you’re determined to lock up, not the choices of your loved ones, not even your own feelings. The only thing anyone can control is her own actions.” She shrugged just as she had a few weeks before after making the same speech almost word for word. “Goodnight, Oliver,” she said—voice and eyes still soft and the gun shifted fractionally before firing.

***

His awareness was coming back in slow waves and he was surprised to find he wasn’t injured somewhere behind the drugs in the dart he’d been shot with.

“Just give me what you said you’d pay me and I’ll go on my merry way,” said a feminine voice laced with mobster’s moll straight out of the grainy black and whites Raisa had watched with him sometimes when he couldn’t sleep. “You’ll never see me again, I’ll never see you again, and we call this whole thing square.” 

He didn’t dare open his eyes, and he fought to keep his breathing and heart rate smooth.

“That wasn’t the deal,” said a voice that was clearly electronically modulated just as he’d modulated the Arrow’s for years.

“Oh yes it was. You wanted Queen and I got him for you all wrapped up in a bow. What more did you want? Because you didn’t ask anything more of me.”

“I wanted the whole team.”

“You think a shrink is going to be able to get a drop on the entire office at the water cooler or something? No. You wanted me to be the good little doctor and I was. I was fabulous—role of a lifetime, changed his life, look out Dr. Phil. You’ve got the magic man; all you have to do now is let them figure out where he is, and they will all come crawling to you.”

“Not Overwatch. She’ll stay in the bunker on coms.”

Oliver was not going to panic. If the team had yet to look for the tracker in his shoe they would the second they realized that he was missing and lock down both Felicity and the kids until more intel had been gathered.

“Oh. I can get you her. But I’ve got to do it now. I’m sure she knows we had a session. You just make sure the jammer is a good one until you figure out how you want to plan this."

_Crap._

***

“Hello, Felicity. How are you doing today?” He listened to the one-sided call, fairly certain that the fake Dr. Mortray knew he was awake and could hear her. “Yes. Oh, well that is actually part of why I was calling. During our session today, Oliver seemed agitated and I was hoping I could ask you a few questions. You wouldn’t have to divulge anything you didn’t want to, nor would you need to be concerned that you’d have to keep our conversation from Oliver. I do find that sometimes it is easier to work as a team for some things than in isolation. I’m sure you’ve found that as well.”

Oliver could, in a detached way, admire how smooth this transformation was: the brackish dame to the polished intellectual. She knew how to manipulate her voice and others better than he’d suspected. That meant it was only a matter of time until she and her boss had his entire team where the boss wanted them—wherever _that_ might be. He needed to trust his team, to find a way out on his own if he could, but to trust that his team was also working what they knew of the problem to solve it.

He listened to Not-Emily end the call with Felicity and turn to her mysterious partner. As they began to focus on hashing out their final deal he opened his eyes and took in as much of the room as he could without making it clear to either of this captors that he wasn’t still feigning sleep. He needed to find a chink in this armor.

***

It felt good to be home, surrounded by friends and family (not in the least because, usually, when they were all in the same room it was easier to keep them all safe). When his phone rang he reached for it with a smile and seeing a name— _Mame De Rast_ —he’d thought he vaguely recognized and assumed was a work connection of some kind, he picked it up. Clearly he’d put this person in his own phone rather than one of his aides' so… “Hello.”

“Congratulations, Oliver,” and the warm, soft voice turned his flesh cold. “I was sorry we didn’t get to say good-bye.” She paused briefly but not long enough for him to figure out how to respond. “I know how hard that can be for you and I wanted to assure you that—as usual—my choices were not about you and you had no real control over them, so don’t blame yourself. Also, I wanted to let you know that you, this, was the most fun I’ve had in ages. You might have some very clear tells, but you are intriguing nonetheless. I’ve left some recommendations for you to continue your treatment.” She kept pausing as though giving him a chance to speak without giving him a chance. But each sentence left him more stupefied by her audacity and that after everything that had happened she could still sound like she had at their first session. “You’ve made such progress. I’d hate to see you back slide. Mame is a wonderful therapist. I think her style will really suit your needs. Take care, Mr. Queen.”

And the line was dead, the tell tale beep of his smartphone. 

“Oliver,” Felicity called over, “who was it?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.” 

She gave him a puzzled look, but he shook his head and wandered over to her and JJ.


End file.
